Social media and the industrial sector

Chris: And so the title was Social Media Use in the Industrial Sector and it’s a really good article. Again, I had a great conversation with Capital and —

Paul: It is a really good article. When you first brought it up, I was like, industrial sector? What?

Chris: Well you know, and —

Paul: Wow, they — you know?

Chris: And this is kind of what prompted me to put that question on Facebook, right. I mean how many people who listen to our podcast are in the industrial sector. I did fire off a question to Dean Calhoun because he’s definitely in the industrial sector and, you know, asking him… There are some basic things that they talk about in this article that we’re going to get into and I was asking him, you know, does he have any input. He didn’t get — either he got back to me in a manner that I didn’t find it in time for the podcast or he didn’t get back to me.

Paul: Because he’s probably on his social media because Dean is like so heavy on his social media. That’s a great example.

Chris: Right. Yeah. And I wanted to get some input because I know — and maybe some of his feedback from his experience because he made an app.

Paul: Uh-hum.

Chris: And so how is that app panning out in helping him in industrial marketing.

[0:15:01]

Paul: For those who don’t know, Dean Calhoun is a podcast listener. You know, he and Darren had been with us for, you know, two years plus.

Chris: Almost day one, right?

Paul: Yeah. And he is part of Affygility Solutions based out of, I believe, Denver, Colorado and they do environmental health and safety. I’m not sure if it’s services or regulations.

Chris: Services.

Paul: Yes. So that’s a very industrial —

Chris: We’ll say regulation services.

Paul: Okay.

Chris: [Laughs]

Paul: It works. Very — that’s an industrial sector. And I remember thinking when I read — kind of when we first got to know Dean, I was like man this guy is pretty good on social media, why does he do this? This is —

Chris: He’s ahead of the curve–

Paul: — industrial.

Chris: — to be sure.

Paul: Very ahead of the curve. So, I was like man wow these guys — why do a bunch of nerdy engineers…? What would they have to do with like SEO and social media? But, you know, who doesn’t? Who does not see the value? Every industry can see the value of SEO on social media and this is proof that it does. Because I almost — I kind of questioned it at first and I read it and I was like man, this is a great article and it makes some really good points that not only apply to the industrial sector but to every sector.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And they do some really good research in the process of putting these articles together. So, you know, one of the questions that they asked is which of the following social media beasts are restricted from use at your work PC and they had Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and then other, which I would assume would be like Delicious or…

Paul: Okay.

Chris: I don’t even know what that —

Paul: Stumbled and…

Chris: I know — so we’re an IT company for a couple of companies here in Dallas and we restrict all of these actually because some of them, most of them don’t need access to any of these. But most people actually were restricted from Facebook. Yeah, they were restricted from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. YouTube is a bandwidth hog, Twitter one could argue is a waste of time.

Paul: [Laughs]

Chris: @Chuck wouldn’t.

Paul: I thought it was a waste of time at first.

Chris: Are you using your Twitter account yet?

Paul: A little bit.

Chris: Okay.

Paul: I tweeted once this week. [Laughs]

Chris: Was it really interesting?

Paul: No.

Chris: No, okay.

Paul: No.

Chris: We won’t even —

Paul: I don’t know what it was.

Chris: — go to — do you know what’s your Twitter account is?

Paul: I do. I do, @paulehanson.

Chris: @paulehanson. And then LinkedIn was only 35% were restricted. So one of the summaries of this article as you’ll find out is that LinkedIn is really the place to be in terms of industrial so…

Paul: And I think LinkedIn is like the professional —

Chris: Site of–

Paul: Yeah.

Chris: — site of social.

Paul: Here’s a great example. It’s like —

Chris: We’ll see.

[Laughs]

Paul: It’s a great example, let me see if I can verbalize–

Chris: Articulate it?

Paul: Yeah, if I can articulate this. LinkedIn is like the Facebook of social media as compared to MySpace.

Chris: Right.

Paul: You know, MySpace came out and you got chicks like in front of the mirror with their thong on and you know.

Chris: Oh, the good old days.

Paul: Yeah. And you can’t even promote that professionally.

Chris: Before your business.

Paul: Yeah. But —

Chris: Yeah, you have a nice professional business Facebook page and they click one link and there’s a chick in a thong.

Paul: Yeah, in a thong with her camera phone in front of her bathroom so…

Chris: [Laughs]

Paul: So LinkedIn I think is a great social media tool, but it’s a professional social media or social media tool for professionals. One thing that I noticed about that article is that most people have–

Chris: Iced tea?

Paul: — Facebook. Yeah, iced tea would be great. Most people have Facebook as restricted from their — you know, from their work. Okay. And I was like okay, yeah, that probably made sense. You don’t want people jerking around on Facebook all the time. But then I thought about it. Let’s say you are Affygility Solutions and you have a Facebook page and you put out good quality content, but now I can’t see. I’m an engineer that needs that stuff, but I can’t see it now. So now I started to think, okay, well yeah, you know, people are going to jerk around on Facebook, but now you’re restricting them from seeing possibly valuable content that I might get something from. I may have went to your Facebook page and signed up for a seminar that you were holding or a webinar, got a good piece of content, downloaded an article. So, you know, it’s kind of butting heads.

Chris: It’s a fine line, right?

Paul: Yeah. It’s a very fine line.

Chris: Because, you know, it would be nice if there were some way maybe to restrict access to posting and doing — I don’t even know what to do but, you know, to restrict access to your personal account, but allow access to the Facebook in general. For instance like if Dean is putting out some good content on his Facebook page and actually, this is probably a consideration that Dean has made, you know, do I only put content on Facebook if a lot of industrial people don’t have access to Facebook from their office.

Paul: Uh-hum.

Chris: Then I’ve got to put content not just on Facebook. I’ve got to put it on other places that they would have access to. So it would be interesting if there’s a way to kind of lock people out of their personal, but allow them to still get into Facebook in case there’s content or seminars that they want to sign up for or whatever.

[0:20:03]

Paul: And, you know, that brings up a good point that was in that article. It talks about you need to think about how your target audience utilizes social media, okay. So if — and that chart was from the industrial sector if 80% — was it 80%? If 80% of your —

Chris: 70%, yeah.

Paul: — 70% of the people that you’re targeting —

Chris: Don’t have access to Facebook.

Paul: — are restricted to it, okay, you need to put that in your — you need to remember that when you’re creating your strategy, you know?

Chris: Yup.

Paul: Am I saying, no, don’t create a Facebook page? No, of course not because people do go home, you know, and some people actually do work at home.

[Laughter]

I know Dean does. [0:20:44] [Indiscernible] like one in the morning about a year ago, what are you doing up fool?

Chris: Working. [Laughs]

Paul: Yeah. So think about that. Think about how your target audience utilizes social media. So the others are a great point something too and to me that’s a point everybody needs to take into account. How do people use that. This is just the last —

Chris: Oh, okay.

Paul: — the last couple of pages.

Chris: Yeah. Okay. So the next question we’ve got here is LinkedIn usage and how many people actually have a LinkedIn account and it was 63%. It would have been nice if they had asked Facebook, right?

Paul: Yeah.

Chris: Because, you know, that’s kind of the number one.

Paul: And to me, LinkedIn is still like the, I don’t want to say the redheaded stepchild, but it’s like the forgotten social media.

Chris: You know, it’s like, hey, I feel like I need to do some networking and be productive and I want to be on the computer so let me go on LinkedIn so…

Paul: You’re right.

Chris: That makes sense.

Paul: It’s only going to get so fun. And I think LinkedIn is doing a good job of bringing in — like I’m not sure if widgets are the right term, but in —

Chris: Twitter feeds and, yeah.

Paul: Because you have Twitter feed on your LinkedIn–

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: — profile. You have all yours like Twitter.

Chris: Yeah, I think our —

Paul: Facebook. Yeah, everything is in LinkedIn.

Chris: Even our blog is tied in there somehow.

Paul: So I think they’re doing a good job of kind of getting up to speed and make it – making —

Chris: Oh, they did ask about Facebook usage.

Paul: Okay.

[Laughter]

Chris: Sorry, I didn’t get to that part. Yeah, so do you have a Facebook account and the answer was 59% yes, do you have a Twitter account.

Paul: I would say very little.

Chris: Yeah, 15% yes and this is again in the industrial sector. So if you’re marketing to industrial sector people, Twitter is not — I mean again Dean stay ahead of the curve, there’s not a problem with that especially when you’ve got your Facebook and Twitter accounts all tied together so whatever you put on Facebook ends up on Twitter. But, you know, don’t lose any sleep because you don’t —

Paul: Yeah.

Chris: — have a Twitter account. Because you use your Twitter account like Paul does.

Paul: Yeah.

[Laughter]

I just — I forgot if Chuck said something good then I re-tweet it.

[Laughter]

Chris: That’s what it’s all about. It’s for re-tweeting.

Paul: Which ten years ago, they used to call copyright infringement, now it’s just re-tweets.

[Laughter]

So to go back to what I just said, you know, you need to consider — when you’re thinking about which channels of social media to use, consider how your target audience use them. If you were in the industrial sector, I’d say number one, LinkedIn. You need to be on LinkedIn. 60–

Chris: Absolutely.

Paul: — 63, 68%, is it?

Chris: No, no, no.

Paul: 60-something percent.

Chris: Yup. 63%.

Paul: 63% use LinkedIn and then 50-something percent use Facebook and then like three people use —

Chris: 59.

Paul: — Link–

Chris: Three, yeah.

Paul: — use Twitter. Yeah, three people in the industrial sector use Twitter so…

Chris: It’s over half use Facebook. Now the question though is, is this a Facebook business account or is this like a personal account?

Paul: Okay.

Chris: Right.

Paul: That is a good one.

Chris: Because it makes a big difference.

Paul: I’d say — I would go as far as to say that —

Chris: It’s all personal.

Paul: — it’s personal.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: Because —

Chris: I mean it does mean that they’re on Facebook, it means they know how to use it, it means that, you know, if a Facebook link were to come up in a search result —

Paul: Yeah, they know how to use it.

Chris: — they would know how to get on there and be comfortable reading it and poking around. And if you, heaven forbid, didn’t put your company information in the initial article, they would at least be able to find it on Facebook.

Paul: Yeah.

Chris: You know, those kinds of things.

Paul: And if nothing else, it’s an extra way for someone to find you. If they Google E-webstyle and they’re just retarded and can’t spell and I probably shouldn’t even use that word.

Chris: No, you told me it was accepted.

Paul: Yeah, it was accepted.

Chris: We’ll pretend we’re in Michigan.

Paul: Yeah. So, if they’re retarded and live in Michigan–

Chris: [Laughs]

Paul: — and they can’t spell–

Chris: Isn’t that rhetorical?

Paul: Yeah. Too much.

Chris: [Laughs]

Paul: Sorry you all.

Chris: Oh, yeah. Our tons of listeners in Michigan.

Paul: So they can’t find you, they can’t find your website, they might find your Twitter, they might find your Facebook, they might your LinkedIn. You know, at the absolute minimum, you’re creating another avenue for them to be able to find you. So remember that. LinkedIn first, Facebook next and then Twitter.

[0:25:15]

And you know here’s what I’d say, I know that how many people use Facebook that’s got to be personal because let’s look at our client base. How much of our client base uses — have professional Facebook pages even though we harp on this like what’s your problem, you need a Facebook page, I need a Facebook page. You know, most of our — you know, all of our clients have websites, but I’d probably say maybe less than half have a Facebook page?

Chris: Or like a product business —

Paul: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: Have a professional Facebook page.

Chris: I’m sure they have a — if they don’t have a personal one then they must be —

Paul: They’d be–

Chris: — from Michigan.

Paul: Yeah. We won’t even deal with them, like no, bye.

Chris: [Laughs]

Paul: So, I think that people are still kind of getting up to the — getting up to speed when it comes to business.

Chris: Well and it’s a tough one. You know, one of the services that we offer –because do you want to go out there and make a product page? You know, we’re not harping on you, but if you make a business or a product page, that’s what they call it on Facebook.

Paul: Uh-hum.

Chris: And you’re not putting any content on it, and you know you’re not going to, then maybe you don’t want to bother right now.

Paul: You’re right.

Chris: Hire us because we actually have a service. Because we realize the value isn’t just in creating the page, it’s actually in putting out relevant content on a regular basis and so we actually have a service where we’ll create relevant content for you and we’ll post that content both to your Facebook and your Twitter page. That’s our kind of social media —

Paul: Have we discussed that before?

Chris: — package.

Paul: Is it the first time?

Chris: I think this is probably the first time we’ve mentioned it.

Paul: So not only do we do websites–

Chris: Oh, yeah.

Paul: — we do social media.

Chris: We do social media.

Paul: As well. Because we talk about this stuff all the time but I forget. Like did we talk about this on the podcast? Because we know it in-house but —

Chris: The last thing we want is another listener to come back and go, you do social?

Paul: Yeah. I just paid some other guy a million dollars to do it. Hold on, didn’t call, dealt with you guys first.

Chris: Oh, that sucks.

Paul: Here’s a question. What about video, you know?

Chris: How many people watch video or is it…?

Paul: I’m not — I think video marketing is becoming — okay, in the general internet marketing world, in the SEO world, video is becoming the big thing. Everyone has video. You’ve got a website, you’ve got to have video on it. Viral videos are huge. That is becoming I guess like, I don’t want to say the new thing, but it’s hot. Videos are hot right now.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: So–

Chris: And they have been a while. I mean it’s been growing and growing. And it’s interesting that — I don’t know if you mentioned that on purpose because you’re a genius? Well, we’ll go with that.

Paul: No, that was just next that I had in mine, video is right here.

[Laughter]

Chris: It asks frequency of social media participation and the number one thing that people participates in social media is watch the video.

Paul: Okay.

Chris: And of course in the industrial sector, it can be a great way to do training, you know, any sort of industrial training. I know like ocean type training includes some sort of video so that could be moving online.

Paul: I go all the time. You know, I follow a couple of different Google products on Twitter and Matt Cutts will post videos about — one of the things we talked about last time — copyright infringement online. I got that from a Twitter link. It was a video that was posted on his Twitter account.

Chris: That would have been a copyright infringed tweet.

Paul: Yeah. [Laughs]

Chris: Sending him to a copy–

Paul: I think I re-tweeted it.

Chris: — right infringed —

Paul: Yes.

Chris: — video.

Paul: As a perfect example, he tweeted something, I went — you know, he’s a respected guy in the industry, I trust him, I clicked on it. It was a video and I learned something. I learned about, hey, if somebody is stealing from you, here’s a way to combat that. So that’s a perfect example of how to use your video and Twitter, you know, to increase the knowledge about your company. Video is a great way to do it, training. I’m not sure if you want to have a viral video for environmental health and safety. I’m not —

Chris: Because it’s all going to be ugly.

Paul: — it would be very –

[Laughter]

Chris: I smell a lawsuit.

Paul: Yeah. I’m not sure how sexy that would or appealing that would even be. But, you know, I used to say that about SEO.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: When we started this, SEO wasn’t very sexy. I think SEO is becoming…

Chris: It’s the new vogue.

Paul: There you go. There you go. That will work. It’s the new black outfit? No, people say it’s the new black lingerie, how about that?

Chris: Yeah. Or —

Paul: That makes absolutely no sense.

Chris: — it’s the new black bikini.

Paul: Yeah.

Chris: It’s the new Facebook thong.

Paul: That’s what’s up.

[Laughter]

Chris: That’s not a catch line we’ll be repeating. Interesting, value of resources for researching work-related purchases. Of course, you know, general search engines was number one. I think this was interesting of course because it’s a GlobalSpec article and I just want to give a little bit more of a punch in the face to Capital. Globalspec.com was mentioned here as number four. And this one, I’m not sure online catalogues, supplier website, and word of mouth….

[0:30:05]

Paul: And here’s something I have in my list. This was like the forgotten and you could say this is the godfather of all social media and probably a forgotten form of social media. What about blogs?

Chris: Oh yeah.

Paul: You know, because blogs are kind of like the introduction to social media.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: Kind of.

Chris: Yeah, it’s kind of the first way that you interacted regularly.

Paul: Yeah. So what about blogs? Is your — do you have a blog incorporated in your social — in your internet marketing strategy? For those of you who just crawled out from under a rock, Google loves blogs, you know? Google loves our blog.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: Google loves us.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: Google loves me.

Chris: Yeah. And that dude that we never saw before.

Paul: Yeah. [Laughs] So think about that. Are you — I mean is a blog in your — I think a blog would be… I personally think a blog would be phenomenal for the industrial sector.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: Because I’d say people in that sector a little more —

Chris: Conservative, they want to just read.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: Read information. They have to have —

Paul: I don’t want to say nerdy, but I was like — you know, they read a lot. These are very technical people. They’re engi — you’re an engineer, you love, you read.

Chris: I read like all the time. Yeah.

Paul: So I think a blog would be a great place to for… You know, okay if you’re in the industrial sector and a blog, blog needs to be in your future. If you don’t have one, you need to get one yesterday.

Chris: One — and I learned this in a course that I took called Gorilla Business School. It’s actually a really good course. It was a weekend. It was a lot of information. We’re running like 14-hour days. It was really good. One of the things that they stressed —

Paul: What was it? Jail?

Chris: Yeah.

[Laughter]

It felt like it at times.

Paul: [Laughs]

Chris: But there were no showers.

Paul: Yeah.

Chris: The thing that they stressed in there was become a world-class expert at what you do.

Paul: Uh-hum.

Chris: And, you know, we’ve kind of — I don’t think it’s actually that hard to become a world-class expert, you just need to read constantly on your subject matter and have some reasonable retention. But then the next step is okay now that I feel I’m a world-class expert at what I do, how do I kind of express that to people and for us, we’ve chosen the podcast for a number of reasons. It’s a great way to give back.

Paul: But even before we did that with a blog.

Chris: Yeah. And we were posting on the blog regularly.

Paul: Yeah.

Chris: So it really is — the blog is a good way to become recognized as an industry leader. And, you know, when you’re an industry leader, it really helps your marketing significantly. You know, in this case, GlobalSpec is clearly an industry leader because they’re putting out these high quality articles.

Author: eweb-admin

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